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I personally wouldn't use a 30/30 or 40/20 during the base to work the problem the user is talking about, at least in the traditional sense where one might use them as a vo2 max workout or something meant to simulate race attacks. A favorite of mine are 30/90 and 45/1:15 basically with the on at 115%-120% and the off at 65%-75% from 30 minutes up to 60 minutes. Alan Couzens has a good article on how to use short intervals during a base period. Also, once every 10 days I aim to do a tough group ride or a workout with simple 2-5min hill repeats at a fairly conservative 110% or thereabouts mainly because even though technically one should be capable of such a workout, its going to be quite a different stressor of they have not done such a workout in a while. Or instead of a normal 2x20, do over/unders that average to FTP for slightly shorter sets, such as 3x15. Another option is simply in the last 2-3min of your 2x20, turn on the gas and force yourself into oxygen debt. It doesn't have to be complicated or necessarily a focus, but a maintenance capacity.

I would personally keep doing some 2x20 mixed with the minimum of shorter intervals needed to improve these sprints. My reasoning is that although you may be slightly slower than team mates in a training interval situation, after 100km the additional headroom in your "cruising zone" will have paid off and you will be able to beat them.

Personally I don't like short intervals, riding the track league is much more fun and gets similar results Of course, you need to be fast enough to avoid being dropped, so it does depend a bit how you ride in the bunch, typical race courses and so on.

mrfish wrote:I would personally keep doing some 2x20 mixed with the minimum of shorter intervals needed to improve these sprints. My reasoning is that although you may be slightly slower than team mates in a training interval situation, after 100km the additional headroom in your "cruising zone" will have paid off and you will be able to beat them.

Personally I don't like short intervals, riding the track league is much more fun and gets similar results Of course, you need to be fast enough to avoid being dropped, so it does depend a bit how you ride in the bunch, typical race courses and so on.

I will of course still be doing 2x20 stuff, but I need to get a bit of boost right now for shorter efforts. The additional headroom won't help me much if I was dropped from the peleton due to early attacks within the first 20 kms But otherwise I agree, and has been one of the reasons I've been working on FTP to make sure to be as fresh as possible for the final dash.

FTP alone will not guarantee "freshness". If it did, no one with a high FTP would ever do longer rides at a slightly lower intensity. There are other factors not directly addressed by training around FTP (both above and below) that could lift this capacity.

For max speed I would say it is all out acceleration to as fast as you can possibly go and then hold for only 5-10 seconds. These wouldn't be percentage efforts, it's completely all out - by the end of your sets you should be dizzy, ready to collapse, not thinking straight, etc.